Meeting Abstract
While micro air vehicles have difficulty flying in highly turbulent conditions such as dense urban landscapes, many birds can navigate through these environments with ease. Avian wing morphing leads to enhanced flight performance, so we further hypothesize that certain morphed wing shapes are more stable in turbulence than others. To study this in real-world turbulent conditions, we use a gliding aerial robot platform inspired by the pigeon (Columba livia) to test the effects of turbulence on different morphed wing configurations. The platform is capable of fully autonomous flight while logging accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, and compass data. To test morphed wing configurations, we swap in and out different interchangeable wing modules. We derived these wing shapes from in vivo measurements of gliding pigeons at different glide angles and speeds. By understanding the performance of differently morphed wings, we can apply control strategies to morphing wing robots for flight in complex urban environments.
